


Less Than Three

by Sholio



Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: Cute, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kid Fic, Pre-Canon, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-20
Updated: 2019-03-20
Packaged: 2019-11-26 04:05:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18175619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Ward is in charge of watching the younger kids at Rand corporate events. It doesn't always go smoothly.





	Less Than Three

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a conversation on the Iron Fist Discord. Yutaya provided several of the details of what the kids got up to.
> 
> Warnings for Ward's terrible childhood/Ward generally being kind of terrible as a child.
> 
> "less than three" = <3

Ward was going to _murder_ those little dipshits. 

As soon as he found them.

He stalked through the chatting grownups with their canapé plates and glasses of champagne, muttering "Excuse me" and "Sorry" as he pushed past adults taller by a head or more than Ward's eleven-year-old frame. And to think he used to find these corporate events agonizingly boring. He'd been having to go to them since he was tiny, dressed up in a little suit, forced to stand around and try not to fidget or get stained with anything while his dad and the Rands chatted endlessly, and adults patted him on the head and told him how cute he was and took his picture with the SAVE THE MANATEES sign or the Rand annual Christmas tree or whatever stupid thing they were having their grownup party about.

Lately, the Rand Industries parties had stopped being boring in the worst possible way, because the Rands and his dad had started bringing Joy and Danny.

And guess whose job it was to keep them out of trouble.

Generally this meant following the trailing giggles and the yelps and the chirped, "Sorry, ma'am!" as the two little _idiots_ played spies or superheroes or cops or whatever dumb little-kid game had them crawling all over underneath the buffet tables and in and out of the caterers' staging area. Ward reflected grimly that _he_ had never done stupid baby stuff like that, or at least he usually hadn't -- mostly because he used to be the only child at these events and the parents kept a close eye on him.

The babies got to have all the fun.

Where _were_ they? He paused in the hall. The party was taking place on the ballroom level of the Rand tower, a high-ceilinged space that could be rented out for expos and technology demonstrations, or used for events such as this one. Over the years, he'd gotten to be fairly familiar with it. There was a balcony, up a staircase that was usually blocked off, and he often found them up there, having snuck past the adult gatekeepers to play with their Gameboys or toy cars. (He'd snuck there himself a few times as a little kid, but this usually resulted in being slapped and dragged back downstairs.) If they had managed to get all the way down to the labs, he really _was_ going to be in trouble ...

Wait. That was the sound of quiet giggling from up ahead. Gritting his teeth, Ward followed the noise to the coat-check closet. He opened the door and glared inside.

"Ward, look!" Joy chirped, spinning around to show off the fluffy white fur coat that covered her and pooled around her feet. "I'm Cruella de Vil!"

"Put that down right now, it's not yours!"

"I'm a spy," Danny declared, clutching the sleeves of an adult-sized topcoat that seemed to be trying to consume him.

"Get out of there," Ward said between his teeth. He glanced over his shoulder. So far none of the adults seemed to have noticed anything amiss.

The only result was more giggling. Joy hid her face in the fluffy collar of the coat.

"Fine," Ward announced. He marched in and got hold of Joy by the back of her frilly little dress, and Danny by his ear.

The giggling turned to protests and wailing.

"Ow," Danny yelped, tears springing to his eyes, "ow, ow, _ow --"_

Crybaby, Ward thought viciously. His dad grabbed him like that all the time, and he'd learned not to cry long ago. "Shut up or I'll twist it," he hissed, and Danny simmered down to quieter sniveling.

"Noooooo," Joy wailed as he hauled them out. She managed to drag the coat with her for several steps. Ward left the coats on the floor because he couldn't deal with putting them back and keep hold of the two troublemakers at the same time.

He dropped them behind a potted fern, both of them red-faced and sniffling, Danny rubbing at his ear. 

"Can't you two just sit in one place for five seconds? What do I have to do, tie you to the banister?"

"My ear hurts," Danny whimpered.

"No it doesn't," Ward told him heartlessly. It did look red, and he fiercely told himself Danny'd earned it and he did _not_ feel guilty about it. "Stop complaining or I'll hit you. Where are your toys? Didn't you two have an entire toybox in your pockets at the start of this evening --" _\-- Of hell._ "Where did it all _go?"_

They just looked blank, as if the pockets full of dolls and Legos and action figures had emptied themselves and wandered off all on their own. Ward had already rescued a Pokemon from the chocolate fountain on the buffet table and left it discreetly tucked into a potted plant a little earlier. The two of them had probably left a trail underneath all the tables like Hansel and Gretel with bread crumbs, except in this case the bread crumbs were overpriced imported plastic, and instead of leading to a witch's house it provided a dotted line all around the room showing where they'd been, like a Dennis the Menace cartoon. Which they did remind him of, come to think of it.

"So booooored," Joy moaned, and flopped dramatically face-first on the floor.

"Play superheroes with us, Ward," Danny begged, all insults apparently forgotten.

"What? No!"

"I get to be Batman," Joy declared, scrambling to her feet.

"Did you hear me say no?"

"I don't wanna be Robin again," Danny whimpered.

"I am not --"

"You'll be Wonder Woman," Joy decided. Danny looked very unsure about this. "She has a magic rope that you can use to tie him up," Joy added, and Danny brightened.

"No!" Ward said.

 

***

 

The only good thing about it was that six-year-olds didn't tie very good knots.

They were up in the balcony space, which was dark and quiet (compared to the room below) and gave a good view of the party going on below them, without being seen. Ward figured it was the lesser of two evils; at least this way he could let the rugrats run around a little and burn off some of the sugar that was all they'd eaten from the buffet, despite his best efforts. Then he could drag them downstairs and show their parents that he was taking good care of the little monsters or at least had managed to stop them from gorging themselves on cupcakes from the cupcake tree in the buffet.

Joy had found an old velvet rope from some kind of cordon-type thing and was making good use of it. She was his least favorite tonight, he decided. Although they were both terrible.

In fact ...

"Where's Danny?" he asked, looking around wildly. If the brat had managed to get all the way downstairs and climb the save-the-orphans display _again_ , Ward was going to strangle him.

"No talking," Joy declared, walking around him again with another loop of rope. Her dress was now smudged with dust as well as chocolate from earlier trips to the buffet. "The prisoner will be silent."

"Where did he go? Why am I asking you." He stood up, shedding loops of rope. Joy's lower lip wobbled. "Don't cry," Ward said automatically. "I just need to find Danny before he falls into the chocolate fountain and then you can tie me up as much as you w --"

"Ward!" came a cheerful cry. "Look at me!"

Ward looked. Danny had managed to climb on the balcony railing and was balancing with his arms spread wide, obvious to the twenty-foot drop under him.

Ward had visions of finishing middle school from prison.

"Ooh, I want to do that!" Joy cried.

"No you don't! Get down from --" He changed tactics in midstream when Danny wobbled in place. "I mean, stand very still until I get you down. Joy, stay here. Danny, don't look d --"

Danny looked down, and said in a voice with a slight tremor in it, "Wow ... that's high. Ward, I'm scared."

Ward was going to drown him in the chocolate fountain.

But first he shook Joy off his leg and lunged across the space between them and grabbed Danny by two fistfuls of his child-sized tux, as Danny lost his balance. Ward yanked him to the floor and they collapsed in a heap. Danny wrapped his arms around Ward's middle and Ward could feel his heart going like a jackrabbit's.

"What'd I tell you about climbing on things!" Ward snapped, giving him a shake.

Danny started to cry, muffled, with his face pressed into Ward's chest. And it was just ... strangely hard to stay mad at him, especially when Joy piled on and pressed _her_ face into his chest and started sniffling too.

"What is _wrong_ with you two?" Ward wanted to know, looking down at the two limply teary kids clinging to him, latched onto his middle and him with one arm around each of them.

They sniveled out a couple of truly pathetic "sorry"s.

"I'm not ... mad, I'm just --" Annoyed. Frustrated. Tired beyond belief. Actually kind of glad that Danny hadn't fallen off a balcony onto his stupid curly little head.

He ended up bribing them with cupcakes not to tell any of the parents about this, which resulted in Danny getting sick into a potted fern and Mrs. Rand deciding to take the children home while Mr. Rand and Dad stayed at the party. The tension in Ward's stomach that had been curling tighter and tighter relaxed suddenly when he heard Mrs. Rand say something to her husband about taking all the kids back to the Rands' house with her: that meant _not_ going home and _no_ Dad tonight, and he looked away and tried not to meet Dad's eyes and tried not to feel too happy about it. 

The knot of tension balled itself up again, tighter, when Dad's heavy hand dropped onto his shoulder.

"Take good care of your sister tonight, Ward?" Dad asked mildly, leaning in so Ward could hardly breathe over the heavy, too-sweet stink of his aftershave layered with champagne, his big hand squeezing just enough to hurt. It was a test; it was always a test. Ward kept his face still and kept his legs from folding and kept his eyes straight ahead.

"Yes, sir." It was the only acceptable answer.

Dad laughed, and then Mrs. Rand was gathering them up and putting coats on the little kids and giving Joy to Ward to shepherd out while she carried a droopy Danny. They took the limo to the Rands' place, the four of them in the back, Joy asleep and drooling on Ward's arm while Mrs. Rand had Danny in her lap. He was way too big to be in laps, Ward thought viciously; maybe he _should_ have let Danny fall. Maybe he'd push him next time. Then he jerked away from that thought, _hard_ , his hands twitching, and looked away, sickened at himself, sick to the core.

"Thank you for taking such good care of them, Ward," Mrs. Rand said, and he looked back at her unwillingly, at the perfect waves in her hair and the clean lines of her lipstick. They were so sleek and polished and perfect, the adults in his life. He didn't know how to be like them. 

She was still talking, her voice warm and sweet: "I know it must be hard to be a big boy of eleven and spend so much time with the little kids. I'm glad we can trust you to be responsible with them. You're a good big brother."

"Yes, ma'am," he said.

 

***

 

At the Rands' place, Mrs. Rand asked if he wanted to sleep on the bunk bed in Danny's room or have her make up a guest bedroom. "Guest bedroom, please," he said, and she smiled and found him a too-big older pair of her husband's silk pajamas to wear.

It was only later, when he was curled up on unfamiliar sheets in an unfamiliar room, that he found himself vaguely wishing he'd taken her up on the other offer. It might have been nice to have someone else's quiet breathing on the bunk above him. To not be alone with his thoughts, and his nightmares.

Which of course was when the door cracked open quietly and dim light spilled into the room. Ward tensed, but it was a small shape in the doorway, not an adult-sized one, and a small voice that whispered, "Ward? Are you awake?"

"No," Ward whispered back, but Joy pushed the door shut with a small child's solemnity and padded across the floor to latch her little hands onto the side of his bed.

"I can't sleep," she whispered. "My tummy hurts."

"That's because you ate like twelve cupcakes," he whispered back. "Go tell Mrs. Rand and she'll give you something for it."

Joy made a face. "I don't like medicine. It makes me sick. Can I sleep with you? Please?"

Ward sighed and rolled back against the wall and lifted the covers so she could crawl in. "If you get sick in here, I'm calling Mrs. Rand and she's putting you back in bed where you belong."

"Okay, Ward," Joy chirped, and put her arms around his waist.

She was so stupidly annoying and even more stupidly cute. He buried his face in her hair.

The door opened again and Ward cracked his eyes open. It had better not be ... but of course it was. Where one of them went, the other followed.

"Go away," he whispered as Danny popped up beside the bed. "No, you can't get in bed with me."

"Hi, Danny!" Joy said.

And the next thing he knew, there was a lot of giggling and two six-year-olds under the covers with him. This was intolerable.

"You two have beds, you know," he whispered. "Go get back in them."

"We'd rather sleep with you," Joy whispered back as the two of them crawled on him and hugged him.

"It's too hot. Stop it --"

There were footsteps in the hall, and they all fell abruptly, guiltily quiet, especially when the door cracked open and Mrs. Rand's shadow fell onto the floor. 

"Ward?" she called quietly. "Sorry to bother you, but is Danny in here with you?"

There was an outbreak of giggling under the covers. "Yes, ma'am," Ward said wearily.

"Is he bothering you? Do you want me to take him?"

"No!" came from under the covers, and four small arms latched onto him. He weighed, for a moment, the relative pluses and minuses of being alone with his thoughts versus having to deal with two small, sticky children who stood a non-inconsequential chance of puking on him in the night, and then gave up.

"No, ma'am."

"Well, if you want him to go back to his own room, just call me," she said softly into the velvet dark. "Danny, do what Ward tells you like a good boy, okay? Good night, Ward. Good night, Danny. Good night, Joy."

"Good night," chorused the covers.

As the door closed and left them in darkness and relative peace, Ward rolled over and resolved to ignore them, which was difficult with their hot little bodies piled on and around him. He already knew from the times Joy had crawled into his bed at home that sleeping with six-year-olds was like sleeping with hyperactive gerbils. He was going to be woken up fifty thousand times tonight.

(But he didn't have nightmares that night. Not even one.)


End file.
